Some of these topics include feeling incompetent; making mistakes; getting caught off guard by fee entanglements; becoming enraged at patients; managing illness; understanding sexual arousal and impulses; praying with patients as part of therapy; feeling ashamed; being fired; and not knowing what to do.
Some of the hardest things about working as a counselor include the often painful process of working through problems itself, the slow rate with which change and healing happen, the emotional toll the work takes on a counselor and factors like the abundance of paperwork and comparatively low rates of pay.
When a therapist becomes dismissive, defensive, disrespectful, or argumentative when you question what they say, they are bad. Therapists must model healthy relationships and objectively listen to what is being said to them. Dismissive behaviors cause people to question themselves and can lower self esteem.
Done supportively, silence can exert some positive pressure on the client to stop and reflect. Non-verbal signals of patience and empathy by the therapist can encourage the client to express thoughts and feelings that would otherwise be covered up by too much anxious talk. Sympathetic silence can signal empathy.
a lack of insight or awareness—often persistent—about a specific area of one's behavior or personality, typically because recognition of one's true feelings and motives would be painful.
More often than not, therapists face discrimination and prejudice from clients. There have been many instances where clients have refused to seek treatment from therapists who are black, gay, or in some cases, therapists who appear to be younger than the client. Prejudice may not bring clients to therapy.
One example of a blind spot in psychology is when someone is asked to assess a social conflict. Most people tend to assume that their response is objective and that the opinions of others, if different from their own, are biased.
An emotional blindspot is effectively a defence mechanism that we develop over time, and it can be liked to anything in our life. “Put simply, they are emotions that we haven't completely felt before, because we are afraid of where this may take us,” EI Guru, Jim Rees, tells GLAMOUR.
Eye contact is broken, the conversation comes to an abrupt halt, and clients can look frightened, “spacey,” or emotionally shut down. Clients often report feeling disconnected from the environment as well as their body sensations and can no longer accurately gauge the passage of time.
One study, by San Diego psychologist Amy Blume-Marcovici, PsyD, found 72 percent of the 568 U.S. psychologists, postdoctoral psychology fellows and psychology graduate students she surveyed had cried at least once while with a patient. Of these, 30 percent had cried within the past four weeks ( Psychotherapy , 2013).
Sometimes we strike a nerve that causes our clients to feel too vulnerable, leading to a “shut down” response. This is a protective mechanism that probably served our client very well at some point in their life when there was a real threat.
If someone is emotionally disconnected,whether they are aware of it or not, the other person might begin to feel that disconnection (whether they are aware of it or not). And if so, a yawn may be the beginning of an interesting conversation that is anything but boring.
Let the client know explicitly that it's okay to cry; there's no need to hold back the tears. If offering a tissue box, it's often useful to say, “Please don't try to hold those tears back. It's absolutely okay to cry as much as you like.”
So therapy is more than just venting. It's about knowing you've been heard, understood, and invited to go deeper with a safe and caring guide. If you've been in therapy for a while and feel like you're spending most of your sessions just venting, it's okay to ask your therapist to review your game plan together.
A safe emotional environment can be achieved through a calm talking voice, a slower speaking pattern, and thoughtful language. Every therapist should be attentive to the fact that each client moves at their own pace. For some, this might be fast and for others, it might take time.
If someone is experiencing dissociation during a therapy session, it may show up through a certain eye expression or through shallow breathing. Or when the attention fades or there is agitation, or other behaviors.
Findings revealed that therapists have strong emotional and behavioral responses to a patient's dissociation in session, which include anxiety, feelings of aloneness, retreat into one's own subjectivity and alternating patterns of hyperarousal and mutual dissociation.
Trina was demonstrating a “dissociative shutdown,” a symptom often found in children faced with a repeated, frightening event, such as being raped by a caregiver, for which there's no escape. Over time, this response may generalize to associated thoughts or emotions that can trigger the reaction.
Can emotions really spread like a cold or the flu? Actually, yes. Researchers call it emotional contagion. It happens when you mimic, usually without conscious effort, the emotions and expressions of people around you.